Earl Van Dyke: A Toy Piano, Blue Note Organ and Gordy's Ban on 'Funk'

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Earl Van Dyke was born in Detroit in July 1930 and learned from the city's jazz piano titans Tommy Flanagan, Hank Jones and Barry Harris. By the early 1960s he was recording as a jazz organist for Blue Note alongside saxophonists Ike Quebec and Fred Jackson. He then succeeded Joe Hunter as bandleader and main keyboardist of Motown's house band, the Funk Brothers, playing Steinway grand, Hammond B3, Wurlitzer, Fender Rhodes, celeste and harpsichord. Known as Big Funk and Chunk of Funk, the large man tapped out the intro of the Temptations' It's Growing on a child's toy piano, and used the Wurlitzer's dark grit to set the paranoid mood of Marvin Gaye's I Heard It Through the Grapevine.

His keyboards also sit under Where Did Our Love Go, Bernadette, For Once in My Life and Ain't Too Proud to Beg. He opened for Motown acts on tour and released solo records, including That Motown Sound in 1965 and the live The Earl of Funk in 1970, often playing over the label's original backing tracks. Berry Gordy disliked the word funk, so the records were credited to Earl Van Dyke and the Soul Brothers or the Motown Brass. His 1967 instrumental 6 by 6 missed the U.S. charts but became a Northern Soul staple in England. He died of prostate cancer in Detroit in September 1992 at 62, a decade before Standing in the Shadows of Motown brought the band wide recognition.

• He used jazz passing chords to color simple pop progressions without crowding the singers.
• As bandleader he set the pocket, gave cues and adjusted tempos during sessions.
• Gordy's crossover goals led Motown to keep the word funk off his record sleeves.
• 6 by 6 found its audience among dancers in Northern England's soul clubs.
• The 2002 documentary Standing in the Shadows of Motown finally put the Funk Brothers in the spotlight.